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President Donald Trump is preparing to sign executive orders Tuesday to bolster the coal industry, including using his emergency authority to force some coal-fired power plants set for closure to stay open and keep producing electricity.
The move has been widely anticipated as the Trump administration set the stage for loosening air pollution regulations that have been costly for coal. And there have been concerns that electricity consumption is rising too fast for the power industry to keep pace. Much of that surge in projected energy demand is tied to America’s build-big approach to data centers and artificial intelligence.
Trump is expected to sign the orders at a 3 p.m. White House event.
According to people familiar with White House plans, Trump’s orders would draw on existing emergency authority. That includes a 90-year-old section of the Federal Power Act, enacted primarily for wartime use, that allows the Energy secretary to direct any power plant to keep operating. Other emergency statutes allow the federal government to waive environmental rules implemented by states.
People inside the coal and utility industries, top Cabinet officials, and the president himself have telegraphed that a multifaceted plan is underway to save dozens of coal plants that are scheduled to retire in the coming years.
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last month, “After years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants, I am authorizing my Administration to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL.”
The White House has also been crafting a series of steps to support the coal sector in the longer term, including allowing utilities to temporarily sidestep EPA regulations under the Clean Air Act.
Last week, EPA created an avenue for coal-fired power plants to seek hazardous pollutant regulatory exemptions. One of the nation’s top-polluting power plants — the coal-fired Colstrip power plant in Montana — quickly emerged as one of the first takers.
Michelle Bloodworth, president of the coal lobbying group America’s Power, told POLITICO’s E&E News last month that her group had talked to the administration about the “need for swift and decisive action” … “to ensure that coal plants that are needed for reliability and national security continue operating.” Bloodworth also said more than 120 coal-fired generating units are set to close within the next five years due in part to regulations written by the Biden administration.
The coal sector is also hoping to open up Western land — including the Powder River Basin — for more mining, reestablish the National Coal Council and make metallurgical coal a critical mineral.
“We need them to stay open,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said during an interview with CNBC at an energy conference in Houston last month.
“They’ve been the most regulated segment of our energy industry,” Burgum said.
The nation’s coal-fired generating plants, long the backbone of U.S. electricity supply, have been in decline for more than a decade, pushed into retirement by cheaper natural-gas-fired power that followed the fracking revolution, by the steep declines in costs of wind and solar power, and by future costs of compliance with clean energy regulations.
Of all the sources of electric power, coal plants are by far the greatest source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions per kilowatt of energy produced.
Energy demand or Trump politics?
Coal plant generating capacity of 286,000 megawatts in 2015 had slumped to 172,000 MW in January, according to a research note by the investment banking firm Jefferies.
Trump’s vow to center U.S. energy policy on fossil fuels and to restore coal-fired plants to prominence in power generation has been a top priority since his first campaign for the White House.
In his first term, Trump considered using the Federal Power Act’s Section 202(c) to keep money-losing coal plants and nuclear plants in operation, according to a leaked administration memo. The idea was dropped after members of his staff pushed back against it, sources said at the time.
That provision would now be the basis of the new action, people familiar with the administration’s plan said.
Legal scholars have questioned how federal courts would respond to orders requiring power plants to keep operating for years rather than in short-term emergencies. But that particular section has been invoked to keep particular plants running for 18 months in one case and longer in others to avoid dangerous power shortages.
Craig Glazer, the vice president of federal relations for the Eastern grid operator PJM Interconnection, said the fight over whether to keep coal plants online could be “bloody,” especially because 202(c) is not designed for a long-term direction to energy markets. Speaking at a conference last week organized by the WIRES transmission trade group before the order was released, Glazer said that operators would have to decide whether it is worth making investments to keep plants running if the executive order may not last.
Glazer said that in the short term, coal producers are doing well to meet power needs. But the sector would need significant investment and relaxed environmental rules to keep running.
“If it suddenly says we’re going to jump in the market to save coal, I’m not sure the market is sending the signal right now that coal should actually stick around,” Glazer said.
Likewise, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Norman Bay, speaking at the same conference, said it wasn’t clear if coal could still compete with natural gas, even with an executive order. “For there to be an intervention that says even though the market signal says otherwise, we are going to tell you to come back, that would seem to be inconsistent with the theory behind competitive wholesale markets,” said Bay, a Democrat.
The president’s vow to make America the world leader in AI technology provides a new rationale for the administration’s intervention to keep coal plants going. Data centers’ power demands could soar from 4.4 percent of the nation’s electricity output in 2023 to between 6 and 12 percent by 2028, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated, with no clear path for producing that much energy by that limited horizon.
The North American Electric Reliability Corp., the U.S. grid monitor, has repeatedly warned that retirements of coal- and gas-plants must be managed carefully to avoid power shortages, particularly in winter when wind and solar power output is poor. While solar power installations have soared, aided by the Inflation Reduction Act, many additional projects have been waiting for years for permission to connect to the nation’s regional power grids.
NERC’s latest long-range reliability report last year estimated that up to 115,000 MW of fossil fuel power plant capacity could retire between now and 2034, pushing power reserves below safe limits in most of the country.
NERC Chief Executive Jim Robb warned that grid operators could face more than 200,000 MW of new power demand than was anticipated just a few years ago, which will be needed for new data centers.
The post Trump to sign executive orders aimed at reviving coal appeared first on Energy News Beat.
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